PEORIA — The Byron Tigers waited anxiously in the dugout for four rainy hours.

“It stunk; we couldn’t do anything but wait,” DH Ben Reibel said.

But this was even worse. When Nate Peterson heard the news, he collapsed on his hands and knees, 10 feet from the white tarp covering the Dozer Park infield. Coach Ray Bielskis walked up and wrapped his star pitcher/first baseman in a hug.

Base Byers would never leave the on-deck circle and see if he could unload the bases with the Tigers trailing by five runs with two outs in the sixth. The game was over. And even Byron’s last rally was washed out, with the game reverting back to the last full inning and the Tigers saddled with a 7-1 loss to Pleasant Plains in the Class 2A state baseball title game.

The Byron Tigers, who had been playing together since third grade, wanted to finish their careers as state champs.

Instead, they never got to finish, period.

“I didn’t expect this. I thought we were coming out as champs,” Byers said.

“And it hurts even more knowing that we don’t know.”

Not knowing also made it harder for the IHSA’s Craig Anderson to make the call to delay the game when Pleasant Plains was making a pitching change, and then to cancel it four hours later.

“I waited what I thought was an extensive period of time to allow the third out or get something to happen, but it got to the point where it just wasn’t safe anymore,” Anderson said. “As a baseball fan, I wanted to see what could happen. That delay when they replaced the pitcher, in particular, made it really unplayable.”

There was real hope for the Tigers when the end came abruptly. Byers (3-for-4 with a walk in two days at state) already had a hit in the game. So did the next three Tigers scheduled to bat: leadoff hitter Tyler Nunez, Austin Carlson and Jack Fleeger. And Pleasant Plains was bringing in a pitcher who had thrown seven innings the day before on a wet mound.

“We knew Base was going to get a hit, and then it was the top of the lineup,” losing pitcher Dan Lowe said. “That would have been perfect.”

It was never perfect Saturday. Not from the start. Byron received a morning phone call letting the Tigers know their game would start four hours earlier than scheduled in an effort to beat the rain.

“It was real uncomfortable, especially for the state championship,” Lowe said. “You always have to be ready, so you can’t blame that for what we did.”

Page 2 of 2 - Byron didn’t look ready, making five errors. But when all looked lost, the Tigers started to find their game again, only to have it washed out.

Leaving them nothing but a great unknown.

“We’re going to wonder ‘What if?’ for the rest of our lives,” coach Bielskis said. “We had a team that could have come back. I know that. They know that. But that’s life. That’s Mother Nature.”

And this is the end of the Tigers’ baseball lives together. That’s what hit Peterson, the unbeaten 13-0 pitcher, when he collapsed to the wet turf in the rain.

“It just hit me that high school baseball was over,” Peterson said. “I will never get to play with these guys again. They are the best group of guys I’ve ever played with. I love them so much. I wouldn’t trade them for any other team in the world, and it just hit me that I’ll never step on the field with them again, never win ballgames with them again.”